Page 45 of Misadventures with a Duke

I don’t know what to be more freaked about now: the fury on Drummer Boy’s face or the fascination on everyone else’s as they whip out their phones and start recording the rumble.

Chapter Ten

Bastien

“Hold. Still.”

Though this is Raegan’s third time around with the words, their vehemence does not wane. But none of her communication has been jovial since the commotion I caused on the bus, causing the driver to swerve, stop, and order us both off the conveyance.

It mattered not that I was the one with blood joining the rain down my face. The woman had jabbed hands into her jacket pockets and turned as if I had insulted her in eight different ways. Without waiting to see if I followed, she tromped across the street. Her pace did not falter even as I completed my crossing too late, earning me obscene screeches and blares courtesy of the people inside several of the car machines.

One of those enculés wanted to waltz into my memory a little more, cutting sharply at the corner to lob an empty glass bottle my way. I picked it up, perplexed why someone would be so wasteful with glass, especially etched with such a dazzling message. Share a Classic with a Friend.

Raegan Karlinne Tavish does not look like she wants to be my friend anymore.

Now, as she pushes a washcloth against my left cheek, I wonder if she has any considerations left for me anymore—as friends or beyond.

I should not be weathering that as if she was the one who punched me on the bus. Oui, the first and second time. I should not be feeling as if she is the one who grabbed one of the broken sticks from me and then lunged it toward my right eye socket. Thankfully, the bus’s driver swerved his wheel at just the right moment.

“Hold still,” she intones. “This is going to sting a little.”

The second she presses the cloth to my cheek, I jerk back with a howl. “Mierde! What the hell—”

She rolls her eyes. “I said—”

“A little,” I bite back. “That is what you said. Not that you had squeezed peppers onto a cloth and thought it would be a good laugh to use the foulness on me.”

She slams the cloth down. “Do I look like I’m laughing?” Her shoulders fall and her eyes darken, but she makes no further move to approach me. “It’s old-school antiseptic. It’s all the innkeepers had at the desk. You want an infection from those welts, that’s on you.”

I hold back from flinging words or a tone that I’ll regret. Moments like this are sometimes better than arguments. Sometimes. The conclusion aside, I seize a chance to study her in full. My poor little rescuer is seething, soaked, and spent—and still beyond beautiful. It still does not feel wrong to admit that, despite knowing her real identity.

It is a force beyond the obvious impetus: her tiny slip of fluent French, so much like Magique, that stopped me as hard as it did her. Nor was it her mumbled comment afterward, when she thought I was not listening anymore. A memory from sheer vapers for her but from last month for me.

But neither of those factors are the grips at my sanity now.

It is her. So many things about this woman, of this moment. The female who should have given up when I fled from her this morning. Who broke the legalities of this time to come and find me instead. Who has turned her life inside out to continue being here at my side, despite how she looks ready to fall asleep on her feet for it.

She inspires me as much as Magique ever did.

And somehow, I sense Magique smiling about that. Approving.

Telling me to care for Raegan Tavish in all the ways I took care of her.

Even if that means pulling in a long breath to strengthen my lungs for the next words on my lips.

“But that is…not the only thing that would be ‘on me’ today, would it?”

Raegan’s chin hikes up. Her gaze goes to green velvet, soft but still so dark. “No,” she murmurs. “It certainly wouldn’t be.”

“Then I am sorry.” I withdraw the cloth from her hold and cup her hands in mine. “You did not ask for any of this. For your existence to be upended like this. I truly regret that.”

“Like you regret bolting from me before we could talk about it and I could’ve helped you in a way other than impersonating a fed?”

I comprehend enough of the words that a sheepish reply is warranted. “Oui. All of that.”

“And you also regret getting into that guy’s grill and then snapping his stick?”

I understand all of that, as well. But the part about giving her my true contrition? I refuse to insult her by bearing that falsehood.